Pilgrims

by Elizabeth Gilbert

stopped breathing, afraid that he might touch her somehow, or

  do something wrong. She took a step back, and he exhaled.

  “But it’s like that with everything you look at too closely,”

  Babette continued. The green dress that she had worn earlier

  was hanging over a low ceiling pipe. She pulled the dress down

  and backed into the far corner again, holding it up against

  herself. “Just look at this lovely green thing,” she said. “Onstage

  it’ll turn a man’s head, won’t it? And I looked so swish in it,

  didn’t you think?”

  My grandfather said that he had thought just that. She ap-

  proached him again, although, to his relief, she did not stand so

  close this time.

  “But you can see what a cheap thing it really is,” she said,

  turning the dress inside out. “It looks just like a child sewed

  those seams, and it’s all kept together with pins. And feel it.

  Go on.”

  My grandfather lifted a bit of the skirt in one hand, although

  he did not really feel the material as he had been told to.

  “You can tell right away that it’s not really silk, that there isn’t

  actually anything nice about it at all. If I wore this to someone’s

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  home, I would look just like some kind of street girl. It’s pa-

  thetic.” She turned from him, and, over her shoulder, she added,

  “I will spare you the smell of the thing. I’m certain that you can

  imagine it.”

  Actually, he couldn’t begin to imagine what it smelled like.

  Cigarettes and oranges, he suspected, but he had no way of

  knowing. Babette let her pink towel slide to the floor, and then

  turned and faced my grandfather in only her slip and stockings.

  “I would guess that I look very nice this way,” she said,

  “although I don’t have a large mirror, so I’m not sure. But if I

  were to take this slip off, and if you were to come over here next

  to me, you’d see that I have all sorts of bumps and hairs and

  freckles, and you might be very disappointed. You’ve never seen

  a naked woman, have you?”

  “Yes, I have,” he said, and Babette looked at him in quick surprise.

  “You have never,” she said sharply. “You have never in your

  life.”

  “I have. It’s been three years now that my aunt can’t care for

  herself. I keep her clean, change her clothes, give her baths.”

  Babette winced. “I think that must be disgusting.” She

  picked up the towel from the floor and wrapped it around her

  shoulders again. “She probably can’t even control herself any-

  more. She’s probably all covered with nasty messes.”

  “I keep her very clean,” he said. “I make sure that she —”

  “No.” Babette held up her hands. “I can’t listen to that, any of

  that. I’ll be sick, really I will.”

  “I’m sorry,” my grandfather said. “I didn’t mean —”

  “That doesn’t disgust you? To do those things?” she inter-

  rupted.

  “No,” he said honestly. “I think it must be just like taking care

  of a baby, don’t you?”

  “No. Absolutely not. Isn’t that funny, though, that I would be

  so disgusted by what you just told me? I’m sure there are things

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  in my life that would shock you, but I didn’t think that you

  could shock me.”

  “I didn’t mean to shock you,” he apologized. “I was only

  answering your question.”

  “Now I’ll tell you something shocking,” she said. “When I

  was a little girl in Elmira, we lived next to a very old man, a

  Civil War veteran. He’d had his arm amputated during a battle,

  but he wouldn’t let the surgeon throw it away. Instead, he kept

  it, let all the skin rot off, dried it in the sun, and took it home. A souvenir. He kept it until he died. He used to chase his grand-children around the yard with it, and then beat them with his

  own arm bone. And one time he sat me down and showed me

  the tiny crack from where he’d broken it when he was a boy. So

  do you think that’s disgusting?”

  “No,” my grandfather said. “It’s interesting. I never met any-

  one from the Civil War.”

  “Now that’s funny,” Babette said, “because everyone I ever

  told that to was shocked, but it never shocked me. So why can’t

  I listen to you talk about cleaning up your old aunt?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Except that your story was a lot more

  interesting.”

  “I didn’t think I still could be disgusted,” she said. “I’ll tell you another story. The church in my hometown used to have ice

  cream socials for the children, and we would eat so much that

  we would get sick. But it was such a treat that we wanted more,

  so we used to go outside, vomit what we’d eaten, and run back in

  for more. Pretty soon all the dogs in town would be at the

  church, eating up that melting ice cream as fast as we could

  throw it up. Do you think that’s disgusting?”

  “No,” my grandfather said. “I think that’s funny.”

  “So do I. I did then, and I still do.” She was quiet for a

  moment. “Still, there are things that I’ve seen in the last few

  years that would make you sick to hear. I could shock you. I’ve

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  done things that are so awful, I wouldn’t tell you about them if

  you begged me to.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want to know,” he said, although

  when he had left his home that evening, he had wanted just that

  sort of information, desperately.

  “It’s not important, anyhow. We won’t talk about it at all.

  You’re a funny one, though, aren’t you? I feel just like an old

  whore saying that. There are so many old whores in this busi-

  ness, and they all look at young men and say, ‘You’re a funny

  one, aren’t you?’ It’s true, though, with you. Most men get a sniff

  of a girl’s past and want to know every single thing she’s ever

  done. And you keep looking at me, but not like I’m used to.”

  My grandfather blushed. “I’m sorry if I stared,” he said.

  “But not just at me! You’ve been staring at the whole room.

  I’ll bet you’ve memorized every crack on these walls, the rungs

  on the bed frame, and what I’ve got in the bottom of my

  suitcases, too.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you have. And you’ve been memorizing me. I’m sure

  of it.”

  He did not answer her, because, of course, she was absolutely

  right. Instead, he nervously shifted his weight back and forth,

  suddenly acutely aware of the different sizes of his feet. Not for

  the first time in his life, he felt unbalanced from the ground up

  because of this deformity, almost dizzy from it.

  “Now I’ve made you flustered,” Babette said. “I think that’s

  easy enough to do, so I won’t be proud.” After a pause, she

  added, “I believe you really are an artist because of how you’ve

  been staring. You’re a watcher, not a listener. Am I right?”

/>   “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “Hum me a bar from my song tonight, or even tell me a line

  from the chorus. Go on.”

  He thought back quickly, and at first could only come up

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  with the sound of the faceless man beside him demanding the

  time. Then he said, “You sang something about being blue

  because someone left, a man, I think . . .” He trailed off, then

  added weakly, “It was a pretty song. You sang it well.”

  She laughed. “It’s just as well that you didn’t listen. It’s a

  stupid song. But tell me, how many couples were dancing be-

  hind me?”

  “Four,” he answered without hesitation.

  “And who was the smallest girl onstage?”

  “You were.”

  “And how big was the orchestra?”

  “I couldn’t see, except the conductor, and the bass player, of

  course, because he was standing.”

  “Yes, of course.” Babette walked to the sink, and spent a few

  moments doing something with the toiletries there. Then she

  turned and approached him with one arm outstretched. She

  had striped the white underside of her forearm with five short

  strokes of lipstick, each shade only slightly different from the

  one beside it. She covered her mouth with her other hand and

  asked, “Which color do I have on my lips right now?”

  My grandfather looked down at her arm, unexpectedly

  alarmed at the slashes of red across the white skin. He paused

  before answering, because something else had caught his eye, a

  faint, bluish vein that ran diagonally across the inside bend of

  her elbow. Then he pointed to the second lipstick stripe from

  her wrist and said assuredly, almost absently, “This one.”

  He looked up at her face only after she had let her arm drop,

  and the intriguing blue vein vanished from view. She was still

  holding her other hand to her mouth and staring at him with

  eyes so wide and spooked that it seemed as if her hand belonged

  to a stranger, an attacker. He slowly pulled her arm down away

  from her face and looked at her in silence. He looked at her lips

  and confirmed that he had chosen correctly. Without thinking

  about what he was beginning to do, he lifted her chin so that

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  her face was out of shadow and studied the shape of her fore-

  head, nose, and jaw. Babette watched him.

  “Look,” she said. “If you’re going to kiss me, just —”

  She stopped talking as he released her chin and took hold of

  her wrist, turning it over and exposing where she had marked

  herself with the lipsticks. He stared for a long while, and she

  finally began to rub at the smearing red lines with the corner of

  her towel, as if embarrassed now by what she had done. But my

  grandfather wasn’t looking at that. He was studying that faint

  blue vein again, examining its short path across its cradle, the

  soft fold of her arm. After some time, he lifted her other arm

  and compared the twin vein there, holding her wrists gently, but

  with a thorough self-absorption that negated the lightness of

  his touch. She pulled away, and he released his hold without

  speaking.

  He crossed the room and looked once more at the dress,

  carefully noting the alarming green again, frowning. Then he

  returned to Babette to confirm the color of her hair. He reached

  up to touch it, but she caught his arm.

  “Please,” she said. “That’s enough.”

  My grandfather blinked as if she had just woken him from a

  nap or delivered a piece of unexpected bad news. He glanced

  around the room as though searching for someone else, some-

  one more familiar, and then frowned and looked back at Ba-

  bette.

  “You should know that there are ways to act,” she said evenly.

  “There are things to say so that a girl doesn’t have to feel used.”

  Her face was empty of expression, but she had lifted the hand

  mirror and was holding it tightly, as one might hold a tennis

  racket or a weapon.

  He blushed. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean . . . I

  get that way sometimes, looking, staring like that —”

  Babette cut him off with a sharp, irritated glance that crossed

  her face as fast and dark as a shadow.

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  “You can’t do that to people,” she said. He started to apolo-

  gize again, but she shook her head. Finally she continued, “It’s

  going to be a very good painting, but not very flattering to me.

  Which is fine,” she added, shrugging cavalierly, “because I’ll

  never see it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, feeling and sounding like a stranger,

  as if he was once more standing outside her door in the dark

  cobwebbed hall beneath the stage.

  She shrugged one shoulder and lifted a hand to touch a red

  curl that was already in place. My grandfather watched, silent.

  “Don’t you think you should leave now?” Babette asked at

  last.

  He nodded, disgusted by the futility of apology, and left. He

  found his way through the dark hall and out of the nightclub

  alone, not needing, or even remembering, the young usher who

  had led him to Babette. Outside it had stopped raining. His

  overcoat had dried in her room, and he had already forgotten

  that it had ever been wet.

  The widow with the bad knees was waiting for him when he

  got home. She did not question where he had been, but said

  only that his aunt was asleep in her chair and had been quiet all

  night.

  “I gave her some soup,” she whispered as he unlocked the

  door.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind.”

  My grandfather closed the door quietly behind him and took

  off his shoes so that he wouldn’t wake his aunt when he passed

  through the sitting room. In his own bedroom, he began work-

  ing on what would be the first important painting of his ca-

  reer. He filled several pages with the charcoal-smudged, faceless

  crowd of the nightclub audience, leaving an empty white space

  in each sketch, always in the same spot. After several hours, he

  examined his work, irritated to see that all the pictures were

  identical: uniformly solid and dark, with a gaping opening in

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  the center for a singer he didn’t know how to begin to draw.

  He laid his head down on his sleeve and shut his eyes. He

  breathed in the tobacco smell of his shirt, at first inadvertently

  and then with great purpose, as if his skill would be enhanced if

  he deeply inhaled that dank odor. After some time, he opened

  his small box of oil paints and began trying to mix the green of

  Babette’s dress.

  Although later in his life his mastery of color would be consid-

  ered unrivaled, that night, as a young man with a limited collec-

  tion of oils, he was overwhelmed by the task of recalling the

 
shade. He worked carefully and several times felt that he was

  close to success, but found that, as the paint dried, the effect was

  lost, the color dulled. He was struck by the inevitability of his

  own limitations.

  His desk was covered already with torn pieces of paper and

  patches of sticky, inadequate green. He looked at the charcoal

  sketches again and thought about what Babette had said. She

  was correct to say that it would be a good painting, but wrong to

  think that it would not flatter her. My grandfather visualized

  the figure that he knew would eventually fill the empty white

  space, and he was certain that it would be a very appealing

  character. Nonetheless, the painting was destined, in his mind,

  to remain a clumsy rendition of a transient, fantastic moment. It

  was he, ultimately, who would not be flattered by this work. It

  was his misfortune to realize this so young.

  He heard a sound and set his sketchbook down on the floor.

  His aunt was talking, and he wondered how long she had been

  awake. He went into the sitting room, where he turned on a

  small reading lamp. She was rocking slowly, and he listened for

  a while to her mumbling.

  “Black-eyed Susan,” she said, “Grace, Anna, Marigold,

  Pansy, Sarah . . .”

  She had become smaller with age. In this lighting, how-

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  ever, with dark blankets over her legs and embroidered pillows

  around her, she appeared stately if not strong. My grandfather

  sat at her feet like a child waiting for a story.

  “Lady’s slipper, Rosehip, Faith, Zinnia, Cowbell,” she said.

  He rested his head on her knee, and she stopped talking. She

  laid her hand on his head and kept it there, where it trembled

  with the constant palsy of old age. He began to fall asleep and,

  in fact, had dozed off when she woke him by saying, “Baby.” He

  half-opened his eyes without lifting his head, not sure what he

  had heard.

  She repeated the word, again and again, in the same low tone

  as her strange, rambling lists.

  “Baby, baby, baby,” she said, and in his distracted exhaustion,

  he misunderstood her. He believed that she was saying “Ba-

  bette,” over and over. Of all the flowers and girls, he thought, it

  was this rich, painful name that she had finally settled on to

  repeat and repeat and repeat.

  He closed his eyes. Even shut, they ached, as if somehow